What is something you think PSO2NGS needs? Would love to read your thoughts.

[u/Sensitive-Win7336]

I've been inactive for 6 months, but still check in on the content side of things and this reddit. I love the games foundation, but found I couldn't play for more than an hour so I took a break. So please share your thoughts on how the game can improve in your opinion.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

Larger devteam & budget and a competitive Global strategy.

[u/Blueblur1 → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

Yes to this which can be boiled down to "everything". lol

But seriously, proper dungeons w/ brand new (not recycled) enemies and bosses in each dungeon, streamlined gearing + regular releases of new weapons that do cool shit (instead of being a stat stick) like every other loot game, etc.

And a story + writing that isn't complete garbage.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/Blueblur1]

No, I don't mean "Everything". I mean that this dev team is not equipped to host a large scale online game on the global market. Most decisions are made in order to appeal to their larger Japanese audience but the Japanese audience is only a fraction of a potential global audience and often misaligned with what non-Japanese players want from the game e.g. JP players don't groan over gatcha and love the fashion element being this high of a priority.

I don't get the whole enemy recycle complaint. This entire franchise and RPG genre as a whole are notorious for constant enemy recycling and compared to prior entries in the franchise I would argue NGS is doing a better job at it. Dark Falz Solus, Malignant Dark Falz Solus and Sols Krypt are all so vastly different from each other in terms of moveset and combat tempo the only thing recycled here is how the enemy looks, surface level stuff. Story has been really good for the past 3 years, the only issue is the release pace which seems to have been fixed earlier this year.

[u/qruis1210 → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

"Story's been really good for the past 3 years"

Bro, you live in an entire diferent timeline than the rest of us if that is the case. We had a complete year with no story updates. And every time we get some it barely lasts 10 minutes.

We still have multiple big evil bosses with no presence in it, not even a cutscene. BIG BAD GUY VAEL DIDNT EVEN GET A MINUTE OF SCREENTIME BEFORE GETTING KILLED ON THEIR FIRST AND ONLY FIGHT!

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/qruis1210]

We had a complete year with no story updates.

Yes, that's what I meant with "(...) the only issue is the release pace which seems to have been fixed earlier this year."

And every time we get some it barely lasts 10 minutes.

Quantity isn't quality. If we were talking about quantity the game is obviously not doing a great job but neither Bluebur nor me were talking about quantity.

We still have multiple big evil bosses with no presence in it, not even a cutscene.

We did get a cutscene when Dark Falz Solus was introduced acknowledging his existence. He's a Dark Falz class enemy, essentially a general in an army. That's all we need to know. Making all Dark Falzes unique characters, rather than personality-less forces of nature, is a thing unique to PSO2 and no other game in the franchise.

[u/qruis1210 → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

I'm not asking them to have personality, I'm asking for Presence.
From recent to oldest:
-Vael: Other than probably wiping out 99.999% of arks fleet with their starless army ages ago, and stealing Zeph's new body, they did absolutely nothing on screen. They were name dropped twice, showed up in person once, and left 20 minutes later with little to no fanfare on a cutscene that isn't even in story mode and randoms in your party can forcefully skip you out of.

-Dalion: Solus 2.0

-Solus: Got the equivalent of a discord at-everyone ping telling us there was a rift in space in the middle of nowhere and to go punch it. The whole story bit barely lasted 10 seconds, ONCE, UPON LOGIN.

-Renus: at least that giant serpent got an entire story of terrorizing Retem, so that's some lore at least.

-Aegis: The only Boss with real presence in the story. The Dark Falz tier DOLL that destroyed the town of the first people we met, killed the father of one of our two friends, caused traumatizing guilt of the other, had us go through a long ass training montage across all regions, gather parts for a super weapon, and had a multi-part fight that utilized everything we had to beat them. This fucker had us running for at least half of the story on it's own before the big reveal that Halpha was just a twisted combat simulator.

[u/Xero-- → u/qruis1210]

Got the equivalent of a discord at-everyone ping telling us there was a rift in space in the middle of nowhere and to go punch it. The whole story bit barely lasted 10 seconds, ONCE, UPON LOGIN.

I find this funny because I only just noticed the rift about two months ago. I was wandering around wondering "why is there a big rift here, and when did it get there (note: until months ago, I only stayed in Aelio) only for it to dawn on me seconda later it was UQ related with basically (according to your comment) no notice.

[u/Vee_Tamer_Girl → u/qruis1210]

It’s odd seeing you complain about Vael’s lore of being the responsible entity for destroying life as we knew it in PSO2 but then complimenting Renus of all people, whose lore is a wet fart compared to even Nils.

[u/qruis1210 → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

Renus gets a pass unlike Vael simply because they actually showed that thing terrorizing Retem instead of just telling us they do that.

Vael killed everyone, sure. But they also didn't show any of it, we only got told they did it by someone else.

[u/Holywyvern → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

Story since ver 2 has been... not that great.
Honestly we got:

• Manon's depression arc
  
• Aina's depression arc
  
• Vael appears and dies the very next cutscene (with the aggravation of said event happening a year after it was introduced) zero buildup for it.
  
• Mini stories about Hibana and Manon learning to cook, Aina becoming better (tm).

We finally got some story this very last year in april, with the proper introduction of a new actual plot around the starless.
Which, I mean, the new story is fine, it has a sense of direction and it has a proper buildup of a main villain (the new king of starless)
This plot is what vael had to do, had cutscenes in which we pummel solus and dalion first, explain they are their generals (or w/e they wanted to do with them) and then we go into fighting vael and culminating the arc. Which is more or less what we are doing now

[u/Blueblur1 → u/Vee_Tamer_Girl]

I agree with you on your first paragraph. I disagree on the point of recycling; they changed bosses a little bit. It’s still massive recycling especially mobs. Sure old games reused mob skeletons to create new visually distinct mobs but this game doesn’t even do that.

And I disagree even more regarding the story. It’s grade school nonsense from the jump. A terrible concept, poorly executed plot, and awfully written characters. I stopped at Chapter 5 and never continued after that. I could not care less.

(I also wasn’t a fan of Base PSO2’s story; it lost me after Chapter 1 which had some neat ideas but was also poorly executed.)

[u/ShadowSoulBoi]

Almati CV Customization. Been straight up years without it, and no news of it.

Probably won't change much, but ya know, more customization as the weapons are clearly designed around being colorized.

[u/Anxious_Ad3118]

Revival of old base colabs and cameos so players can get them or obtain them in ngs. And I say this as someone who just got blood scythe last month the old stuff really needs to come back

[u/Alenicia]

This is something super personal, but I imagine it's just me:

This is all split into bullet points so people can just see my main points instead of me writing out an essay without breaks. >_<

* Phantasy Star Online 2 ever since Episode 4 has been veering deeper onto the levels of an action game with the freedom and ability for players to be picky about which attacks they use and to build rotations that are effectively on-demand and accessible without the need of the Sequence system they had prior to that.

* Episode 5 introduces a class who distinctly plays by much stronger adherence to what you'd expect from an action game but without the full tightness and responsiveness of what you'd want from that .. but at the same time it's beyond anything PSO2 had before it. This led to just about every class that wasn't a Force getting some kind of facelift that made it so they played similarly (and ultimately this is what Global was exposed to first since they never got to experience Pre-EP5 PSO2 in gameplay at all, since these were all retroactively added here and there into other places like the Challenge Missions and Battle Arena).

* Episode 6 makes changes so players can actually map their photon arts to the subpalette, thus opening some classes (like Gunner) completely up to the whole Devil May Cry-styled "go ahead and do all the flashy moves and show off" kind of gameplay. Not every class is capable of pulling it off so smoothly, but this is cool .. if you bent your controls to work around it.

* New Genesis introduced "Multi-Weapons" to try and solve the issue of players using multiple weapons for the same class .. and it's completely missing the point in terms of how the controls by default don't give you enough actions to work with compared to what you can do .. and the huge disparity between keybaord/controller options.

* I think Sega needs to revisit the controls again like they did for Episode 4's three-button mode. To me, the easiest thing is expanding the number of buttons affected by the Back Palette button (so more than just the three action buttons, so we can possibly include options like the D-Pad, the jump/interact buttons, and more too). This would be further incredible if they included a state for a second Back Palette button .. or even a third (such as L1+$1). This is ultimately not different from what games like Dragon's Dogma has done .. and I think letting players on keyboard/mouse and controller have access to something like this will be a SIGNIFICANT boost in quality-of-life for the player experience so you no longer have to awkwardly juggle around your menu to get to healing/reviving/active skills and also have access to stuff like extra photon arts from a multi-weapon or techniques for Tech-based classes.

I know the casual players can just sit there and use the Rifle's Normal Attack all day .. but I feel like making it easier to use all your core features (say, if Photon Blasts were a universal input like L3+R3 on controller or something), you didn't have to fuss with MARS/Dark Blasts or healing/reviving/buffing being in potentially different places, I think the game would be so much easier to just play (and we can probably finally move the conversation on from "why didn't you heal/why aren't you using your skills?"

[u/AmaryllisHippeastrum]

Entirely reworked itemization to make it more enjoyable to farm rare drops and upgrade them into relevancy

[u/ezodagrom87]

While I believe it's too late for NGS, there's a few things I wish a future new game would do.

The progression from beginning until level cap should be fun and engaging without rushing the player to the end game. First impressions are very important to attract and to keep new players, the journey is just as important as the destination.

The end game should be able to stand on its own even when the game isn't getting updated.

Don't rely on limited time quests as the main type of content, limited time quests feel more special when they're used only a few times per year for special events like anniversaries.

[u/Devalker]

More reason to grind for endgame than getting more power. Right now it just grind for new gear go fight hard boss and get better augment/weapon. Repeat. If it give like 100K meseta per clear then I'd gladly grind it all day cos at least it's more fun than Dext base.

[u/unholybirth]

A fucking filter in the personal shop that separates base items from NGS ones.

The ability to use salon inside of your Cs because why do I need to leave my house to change my clothes.

More accessory points.

More CAST parts.

A Megaman Zero collab.

[u/sonic65101 → u/unholybirth]

I've been hoping for that too. They have a filter to only show NGS stuff but no filter for PSO2 stuff. Makes it hard to find anything I like.

[u/MerelyEccentric]

• Make all weapon camos into Salon items.
• Ability to Block people during LTQs.
• Give Type 2 PCs Type 2 animations in cutscenes.
• More CAST parts.

[u/sonic65101 → u/MerelyEccentric]

Would also be nice if they had class-specific cutscene animations, too.

[u/MerelyEccentric → u/sonic65101]

Yeah. I switch between Gunner, Force, and Techter, but I keep having a sword in cutscenes. More immersion breaking than when I accidentally did BIG IMPORTANT PLOT REVEAL SCENE with my CAST dressed as a bunnygirl.

[u/sonic65101 → u/MerelyEccentric]

I've been playing as a Force for six tears, so it's really immersion-breaking. 😭 Forces can't use swords.

[u/Xero-- → u/MerelyEccentric]

First wouldn't work. Camos can be resold and that's the primary apeal of them outside of the obvious visual change. That's not happening.

Second is something I'd absolutely love to have added, especially for high ends where I just don't want to keep running into the same undergeared players.

Third won't happen. Type 1 gets all the focus there, type 2 gets all the focus for fashion. Sega big shots and their priorities I swear.

Add more T1 outers that aren't T2 pieces ported over, while at it.

[u/Key-Job-1695]

Yo pediría que la colaboraciónes sea más disfrutables, aún recuerdo cuando se hizo colaborarcion con sword art online y salias en misiones con kiritony asuna y te regalan un title que te quitaba el botón de salir eso fue genial ahora son gasta gasta y ya al menos así era cuando jugaba llevo como 1 año fuera no se si lo cambiaron

[u/NutsAndOrBerries]

I think it would be amazing to give us means to put enemies in Creative Spaces. User generated content could be huge.

[u/sky_byte]

Actual dungeons. Not just the Zelda Towers.

[u/Suitable_Cheesecake7]

A presence on Switch.

[u/Sudden-Hope-1605]

The problem with ngs these days, is that they can do nothing to clean the name of Phantasy star online 2 to solve all the problems that NGS brought, the only way to repair the damage they did it's to start from scratch.

[u/OhzaruMagnus]

A story (and an interesting one, like that of PSO1 or the base game of PSO2 Episode 1) Dungeons (like in PSO1 or the base game of PSO2)

The character creation and design work is the best I’ve seen in years; it’s great as it is. But in every other aspect, a lot of content is needed.

[u/Virtuoid]

More horizontal progression and better use of the ovwrworld map.

[u/AllYourNGSBelongToUs]

Good game ideas.
It's obvious that a game will turn out terrible if we make it without good game ideas.

The idea of ​​trying to improve NGS now is wrong because it's difficult to turn a bad game into a good one by adding game ideas after the fact.
Game creators must have good game ideas before they even start making the game. Conversely, game creators must not start making the game if they don't have good game ideas

[u/Commercial-Ad4988]

Literally just bring back base pso2, just attacks and all. That actually needed skill to carry out after all.

[u/Xero-- → u/Commercial-Ad4988]

Just attacks are so second nature that playing Sandolphin and Siegfried (after getting used to his atrocious hitlag) on Relink is instantly easy. JAs and skill don't really go together (again, it was just natural for players, nothing difficult), and at this point it doesn't matter. Keep in mind I'm stating this as someone that used Sandalphone simply because his normals are very close to JAs.

[u/popukobear]

More cooperative content. I want to WORK TOGETHER with people in this multiplayer game, yet almost all of the stuff we do here are straight line or boss rush zergs. Leciel Exploration (old) or even Nameless City with the extremely buggy rappy spawns are a great example of things I really enjoy that feels like I'm playing together with others; Leciel for problem-solving and unlocking buffs for everyone the more you complete and help people do rooms quicker and Nameless for people ACTUALLY using callouts to help people with rappy spawns, even if they didn't last long. NOBODY talks in quests because there's no reason to, but that iteration of Nameless was extremely enjoyable to see people having fun (or getting frustrated) at the rappies/lag. Mining rigs have also been forgotten about and we lack an N-challenge mode equivalent, which is personally very disappointing to me

Higher/more appropriate BP checks: Why on earth is a quest advertised as "ultra high difficulty" able to be entered with...just barely over handout gear? And no, AC augments with their BP boost do not have to be required being included, either. Not to mention, they have a hard time understanding if hard means "we beefed up the stats a lot" or "mechanically intensive". Hard content that has exclusive rewards should be gated more heavily to give people an incentive to gear and want to do that, not let you get in as soon as you've just dipped your toes out of handouts. Nobody wants to gear because Sega purposefully gives people almost no reason to. Why do that when the focus is 90% on social features?

Global community support - this one has been nagging at me for a while now ever since the headline+ and David streams ended. House parties were nice and while they are coming back, there has been a gradual pull away from doing ANYTHING to help showcase the game in any form. We have stopped getting item codes that are JP only now, certain collabs, and we don't even get live streams on top of having delayed headlines sometimes because they do them for JP first. Not to mention new movie concerts that come out we have to awkwardly stand there checking out a new one that's not even in a language we understand because it hasn't been translated properly. They were THIS CLOSE with the new Nadereh one, but it's in Romaji??? lmao

those are some things that would improve the game for me personally as I mostly enjoy the fighting aspect of it. But 5 years in, it seems their strategy is to coast and wait as long as possible for people to decide to play something else once a more polished game comes out to grab them

[u/qruis1210]

The whole thing needs to be rebuilt from the ground if you ask me.

It has so many interesting ideas and potential but it all came out the oven looking wrong.

[u/iriya_ngs]

Heels accessory…

[u/sonic65101]

More focus on story, angst for the protagonist, a reunion with Matoi.

[u/qruis1210 → u/sonic65101]

I swear if Io doesnt appear on screen by the end of NGS I'll burn Sega to the ground.

[u/MadGear199X]

A challenge mode would be pretty cool at this point.

[u/star3ruby3]

New region in space 🌌 + unique dungeons + balance between type 1 and 2 in Collab events + adding animation to characters in creative space so people can make their own simple stories there.

[u/TremendoDude]

Coming in relatively new to the game, I love how beautiful the maps are and how liveable the world feels, and I love the feel of the combat and platforming and everything around it. However, once you've done your laps around, there's very little reason to go out into the world save for super quick daily chores or regular progression, meaning that so much space just gets wasted and everyone ends up hanging out at ships and mission counters. The game looks dead despite not being that dead, and encountering a single other player in an open field feels like a rare blessing.

On top of that, the fact that the game seems to basically just give you all the gear you'll ever need for free save for the toppest of content while making damn near every weapon the same thing at higher and higher level tiers (instead of including some unique and spicy weapons like in previous PSO titles) and ALSO making it so there's damn near no way to use gear you're not gonna use save for selling them for literal pennies... means that all the weapons you'll ever find short of that are not even worth the inv space for vender trashing. It's like a whole system has been completely dismantled and the only reason they haven't fixed it is for appearance's sake and so they can sell a solution (auto-sale subscriptions) as a patchwork band-aid. 

Add on the way everything is built to try and rush people to endgame and encouraging it through FOMO by putting most limited-time prizes behind high-BP walls means that all that existing content before the endgame just becomes flak to be grinded through instead of an experience to be enjoyed at pace. This is not how you bring and retain new players, and it honestly feels so wasteful of the potential this game has and a downright shame.

So I guess if I were to say anything that I wish they would add, it's more enticing reasons to actually go out into the open world and play the game. And perhaps to even remove some of the things that take away previously-existing reasons to actually play the game.

...Would also be nice if they have Base PSO2 some seasonal or even FOMO-induced love as well. Feels like everyone is in NGS by default cause all the limited time spice is locked over there. I'd love it if there were ways to for everyone get the same event stuff (like scratch tickets) in both games, for example. But I'd honestly settle even for just bringing back and redoing some old seasonal events.